


Extreme Reactions

by MountainRose, szzzt



Series: Bluescreen 'verse [2]
Category: Iron Man (Comic), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (resolved in Bluescreen, AI Feels, Body Modification, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extremis, Hugging, Steve does not approve of your risk taking, Team Dynamics, Team Feels, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Your team would be scary if they weren't on your side, go read that)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 14:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2154000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MountainRose/pseuds/MountainRose, https://archiveofourown.org/users/szzzt/pseuds/szzzt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers had been, understandably, concerned when Iron Man's encounter with Mallon looked fatal.<br/>Tony may have...underestimated the force of his team's affection and concerns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extreme Reactions

**Author's Note:**

> OMAKE! :D  
> Set between chapters 1 and 2 of Bluescreen: The Avengers' reaction to the Mallon incident and Extremis.

He went out to the helipad to meet them because, well, why the hell not?

They wouldn't have had trouble finding the house. Unless you really liked scrubby trees, within five hundred feet the attractions were (1) cliff and (2) house, and yeah it was low-impact minimalist-modernist but it was also blindingly white and pretty fucking obvious. So that wasn't why Tony went out to meet the Quinjet.

Clint was the first down the ramp, pacing off travel antsiness Tony could see from here, even with his normal eyes. He must not have had a mission this week. He spotted Tony instantly, of course, even though Tony was in a once-white hoodie and workshop-stained capris, looking like a gardener, oversized shades his only concession to the long telephoto lenses of the paparazzi down at the gate. When Clint nodded toward him in a motion too small for normal eyes to catch from here, Tony nodded back and enjoyed the archer's start of surprise, sharp and clear in the Quinjet's underbelly camera feeds. Maybe he wouldn't tell anyone he could do that just yet.

Natasha was next off, too cool for school. She looked around perfunctorily and waited by the ramp; she'd been here before, though it was years. Tony wondered if there was any way to trick her into stepping in the hole in the atrium floor.

Cap was last, buttoning up the jet and raising the ramp as he was jumping down. He set off across the white concrete and the other two fell in behind him like they'd practiced. They might have. Rogers was doing a lot of work with SHIELD these days.

Tony wished Bruce was here. Or Thor; no one could feel awkward next to Thor. He shrugged, unfolded himself from the shade, and went out to meet the supersoldier superspies.

XXXXXXXX

"Natural gait," Clint muttered. "No visible injuries. No bandages. No _weapons_ , is that normal?" he said aside to Natasha, who pursed her lips.

"When I was with SI, Stark didn't habitually carry weapons on him. But he was rarely out reach of his portable suit or his AI. He wasn't actually careless with his life when he knew he was under threat."

"Hm," Clint said thoughtfully. Stark thought he wasn't under threat now? "Why'd Coulson lock down this airspace then?"

"There is still a threat. Alphabet agencies like to overreact," Nat said. "They especiallydon't like anyone who can data mine their data mining -- _if_ what Hansen said is true-- and they don't mind acting on rumors. But at this point it’s more likely to take the form of infoterrorism than a physical attack. Less traceable."

Clint nodded. The press-circus interview Stark gave after his second fight with Mallon, taking off his helmet and squinting in the sun and establishing beyond a doubt that he wasn't dead, had neatly tied the hands of anyone who might want to keep him that way. The way Iron Man tended to vanish back to California as soon as he could after battles had given Clint the impression he didn't actually like to grandstand, but there was no denying that Stark knew how to do it.

"He nearly died last week," Steve said in the thin-lipped tone he'd been using the last few days, striding a dozen feet out ahead of them. "He has a right to security in his own house. Or on his own helicopter pad, I guess."

Clint shot a glance at Nat; they probably shouldn’t mention the photographers staking out the perimeter while Steve was wound up. She shrugged in agreement.

"Can he even get out of reach of his AI any more? Or his armor?" Clint said more quietly, thinking of the wilder speculation in SHIELD's analyst pit.

She smirked very slightly. "Want to find out?"

"Flying armor bits. Armor bits that fly," Clint singsonged without moving his mouth. He'd watched _that_ second-and-a-half cut from the fight enough times to be absolutely sure of what he saw.

“Avengers! Welcome to my humble abode!” Tony called, throwing his arms wide.

“Humble is not the word I'd use,” Steve half-laughed, striding right through Tony’s personal space and squashing the surprised engineer against his chest. Clint gave them plenty of room; Tony was sort of awkwardly patting Steve's back while his other arm stuck out from his side, unable to hang naturally because of the hug. “Tony," Steve said intently as he pulled back, hands shifting to hold Tony by the shoulder, "How’re you doing? You look good.”

He did, suspiciously so. There had been enough blood left at the attack site that Tony would have needed transfusions for days, and even a week later, he shouldn’t look this good. But he did, and it wasn’t makeup; it was in the exuberant way he moved too.

“I’m good, great, come on, inside. Fewer watchers in there.” Tony squirmed out of Steve’s grip and ducked back towards the house. Clint followed his bare feet with sharp eyes as they trailed down the path and cut across the regular driveway; that hitch in his left leg from the break he’d had last winter, the one that Clint had been pretty sure was never going to go away, _had_. And was it just reflected light, or did the soles of his feet look shiny, like he'd walked through paint? The effect went away as they passed into the shade, and Clint gave it a mental shrug.

“Isn't the property secure?” Steve asked. His shoulders bulged defensively as he paused in the doorway and Clint patted him on the back to give him a bit of impetus to cross the threshold. The glass slid closed behind them and the water-cooled air was really welcome after the baking concrete outside.

"There's secure and then there's the third estate," Tony replied absently, waving a hand at them over his shoulder. "I could hire a guard for the gate, try to shoo them all off, but it's more trouble than it's worth. Flash them some ankle every so often, and they won't go to truly stupid lengths for the tabloid headline."

"You do have nice ankles," Natasha said.

Tony stopped, turned around, and scrutinized her. "Are you buttering me up to kill me, or are you an LMD?" he said rhetorically. "Don't give me that reasonable 'but it's the truth' defense. See if I tell you where the good tea is, or let JARVIS tell you either. And you!" he snapped, pointing straight at Clint without looking. "The first time you drop out of a vent at me, you are getting punched by a codpiece _in the face_. Kapish?"

Clint took a long step back. "Weenie," Natasha said.

" _Codpiece_ ," Clint said. Tony smirked, and led the way through a living room and into...another living room. This one seemed to be better, because it bore an empty mug on the coffee table and some rumpled marks of actual human habitation.

“What makes you think we’re staying, anyway?” Clint said, dropping into the couch and letting his gear tumble into a heap on the floor. Tony gave it the stinkeye as Clint nestled his quiver and bow on top.

“Hmm, let me see. Your story about staging posts and secret spy hijinx would hold more water if you'd made any effort to hide the visit. And hadn’t just had your pictures taken by TMZ and Fox. Drink?” Tony pulled a brownglass bottle out from under the bar and waved it at them. Clint caught the label for a second but the artisan font was illegible, and then Steve was in the way, hip cocked against the bartop.

"It's entirely normal for the Avengers to convene when one of their members has been injured," Nat pointed out. A short, thoughtful silence fell as Tony gathered bottles and set them out, none of the others trying to hide their stares now. Tony took it well; Clint knew he was used to being the center of attention.

“Okay,” Tony said finally, quiet and introspective.

“You kept saying you were fine, so…we made up an excuse.”

“Yeah. I get it.” Tony scooped up the four bottles --one green, two brown and one a lighter yellowish colour-- and skirted around Steve to flop onto Clint’s claimed sofa. He looked consternated and almost sad, like he'd taken something apart that he knew he couldn't put back together. The green went to Steve, Clint got the light brown, and Tony and Natasha knocked the necks of their identical bottles together. “So, ask.”

Clint focused on his drink, squinting at the fancy label and turning it sideways to see if that made it any easier to read. There was a long pause; no one quite knew how to start. _Soo… you can see and hear at freaky long distances and walk barefoot over scalding concrete, how's that going for you?_ Steve was their designated Tony-herder, but even he took a second to twist off the cap and take a sip. Buying time.

“We thought you were dead.”

It had been horrible, a confirmation of what Clint had always known: they were going to lose people and he wasn’t gonna be able to take it. Steve’d been incandescent at everything and no one, grieving in a clumsy, angry way that made it obvious that practice hadn't granted skill. The team had only been together four months, and though they knew Iron Man none of them knew _Tony_ all that well. Clint had hated himself for wishing that made it easier.

They’d been a mess, right up until the moment Stark's AI reactivated himself in the Tower, told them he didn't yet know what was going on either, and threw live footage of Iron Man's second, unexpected, miraculous comeback grudge rematch up on every screen.

“So did I. For a bit there. Took a real beating; reactor wasn’t sitting right, bunch of breaks, ruptured organs.” Tony flexed his fingers absently. It wasn’t the lightning-quick fidgeting he was always doing in briefings, more like working out an ache.

"I'm gonna point out that this explanation isn’t making things better." Clint fixed Tony with his best glare, his fingertips creaking on condensation-damp glass.

“I’m _fine_ , shit-- I didn’t mean-- Look, I gave an interview afterward, right? Told them my old suit was totaled and I needed to go finish up the new one, and that's true as far as it went, except well, like you noticed, too much damage for me to survive. But I'm not dead, because--I had some work done, at a cellular level, sort of like the serum except this time dear old Dad can suck it because I saved my life _myself_.”

Steve rocketed to his feet, dropping his drink; Clint managed to catch it, but not before a splash of sarsaparilla escaped, splattering over the back of his hand. " _What?!_ Tony, did you --Howard kept the Vita-Ray machines, did you-- did you replicate the Serum?"

“Steve, no, calm down, I’m fine, it’s called 'Extremis' and it's completely different--” Tony held his hands out, placatingly, but Steve wasn’t having any of it.

“That's not better--that makes people _explode! TONY!_ ”

Clint and Nat were on their feet too, trading grim glances at the confirmation. Mallon had been dosed with Extremis; mentally and _physically_ unstable from the moment he appeared.

“Tony, I want to talk to JARVIS,” Nat said, under Steve’s yell of ‘why would you _do_ that!’ Tony whipped towards her, comically shocked.

“What? Yes, of course, go ahea-- _stop yelling at me! I was dying! I did what I had to!”_

Clint had had enough of the yelling himself. He set both bottles down, stuck his fingers through Tony’s rear belt loops, and pulled as he sat back down. Tony's knees hit the edge of the sofa and he _fwump_ ed down onto the cushions. Steve had always had trouble yelling at people who were sitting down.

Tony made an inarticulate noise of frustration, rubbing a hand over his face and leaning forwards to let Clint retrieve his arm from behind him. Steve was red, crimson even, but the yelling had stopped.

“Now’s when you _talk_ , Tones.” Clint retrieved his drink and prayed it was intensely alcoholic. Of course, it turned out to be a yeast-brew ginger ale. _Fuckin' fancy-pants rich boys._

“I _was_ dying, alright? I didn’t have much of a choice, but I did have time.” Tony leaned forward, elbows on his knees and deadly serious. “I had hours, enough time to fix the code, teach it how to slave its directive tree to the suit, give myself _direct_ control and take out the really stupid features like the internal fusion and the exploding, and power it with the arc instead. And well, I added a bunch of stuff I happened to be working on for suit integration. I can um,--”

One the other side of the coffee table, Steve’s jaw creaked.

“You can _what_ , Tony.”

“See the entire EM spectrum now, if I want. Feel wifi signal strength, it's like magic fingers, can't wait to go into a Starbucks. Uh, talk to JARVIS with my mind, and well, pretty much anything else with communication circuits, and probably some systems without--if I'm close enough I bet I can induce signals directly, it's actually…"

“You’re a _technopath?!"_   Clint had been looking forward to some kind of level-up shit, but this went way beyond crazy control of the armor."Fury is going to _freak the fuck out_ ," he added reverently. "Shit. We're all gonna look back on the good old days when you needed an actual terminal to hack the UN, aren't we.”Clint considered, then drank to that. _Fuckin' teetotalers._

"I'm not going to be making it fucking public knowledge, Barton," Tony snapped, drinking deep from his own bottle, lip curled like he also wished it were something else.

“And the healing factor,” Steve said, intensity cranked way up.

“Full and complete regen. Physically, I’m about twenty-five, twenty-six.”

He was lying. He tried to hide the tell in his drink, but Clint had actual training in this shit. Not to mention poker hustling. “Bullshit, Stark; why's the nightlight still in your chest then? Don’t tell me you had that at twenty-five.”

Tony flopped back against the couch with an aggravated sigh. “Fine. The ticker’s not-- Look, the organizational cues that direct nervous pathways are missing in the adult body, and in my heart the existing pathways were so burnt, Extremis couldn’t use them as a template; too many layers of successive scarring. Even in the rest of my body, as far as I can tell my analog nervous system is still last year's model, minor nerve damage and all.”

Clint was vaguely concerned that Steve was going to break his own hands, his knuckles were so white, but Tony looked too exhausted to notice.

“The new heart doesn't have its own nervous system, it’s blank myocardium. But the syncytia is intact, so all it needs is a replacement for the AV node.” Steve’s face was a picture of rising frustration with the unfamiliar terms. Clint was used to not understanding; he’d get the gist of it someh--

“It needs a pacemaker?” Nat asked from behind them, which was clarifying. Tony jumped, but Clint had been waiting for her to turn up.

“Extremis manages it, but, yeah, basically. I need the arc power to maintain the healing factor, the added senses, the computational elements and other pure-digital stuff that's outside my bio metabolism, but mostly for my heart. So.” Tony got the curled lip again, an ugly expression. "You could still stop me by yanking it out."

 _"Sir,"_   JARVIS said, chiding, the first time he'd spoken in this house.

Clint didn't look at Natasha, but she'd probably gone blank and neutral, the same mask-over-hurt he could feel on his own face. He kept his eyes on Tony, who half-turned away, took a deep breath, and visibly --utterly strangely-- relaxed. It was like watching a dog's hackles go down.

In the silence Steve blew out his breath, stood up, and walked slowly around to wedge himself next to Tony on the couch, capturing one of his hands. Tony turned on him in surprise. "JARVIS," Steve said, "compared to Mallon--"

_"Sir's situation is so different from that of the other Extremis carrier that comparison yields no result of value."_

"The instability--"

 _"Captain Rogers, Agents, Sir is stable. The modifications he made before exposing himself to Extremis were fundamental and thorough. Like a human's neural network, the self-ordering system he has established will become_ more _robust, flexible, and stable over time."_

"It's permanent?"

 _"Yes,"_   JARVIS said, and "Oh hell yeah," Tony said.

"You're not going to explode. You're not going to go insane," Steve said tentatively, testing it out.

"Believe it or not, 'no exploding/no insanity' were at the very top of my to-do list," Tony said, still guarded, but watching Steve with a little bit of charity in his eyes.

“What about side effects?” Steve asked, turning Tony’s hand over with a frown.

“The term 'side effects' has such negative connotations--”

“ _Tony...”_

“None! Okay?!" Tony snapped, looking wildly to the side. "I’m not going to fall over dead if I get hit by an EMP, I’m not going to run out of batteries anytime _this century_ \--”

“Stop _lying to me!”_ Steve bellowed, sending Tony jerking back into Clint. Clint didn’t flinch. No really.

“ _Jesus_ fuck, Cap!” Tony yelled back, tugging at his hand. “If I keep a _hypothetical_ side effect private, because hypothetically it’s a _sex thing_ and my private life is _none of your business_ ,” he hissed more softly, glowing crimson but not glowing the way Mallon had, “ _do you really want to keep asking?!”_

Steve deflated and shook his head, going red himself. “So long as it's not bad,” he mumbled, practically into Tony’s hand, flat between both of his.

"So glad I have you to make these decisions for me," Tony said acidly, and Clint got it, he did, but it was still painful to watch them rub each other wrong. And holy shit, what the hell kind of side effect could make Tony Stark blush?

Then Tony took a breath and did that strange, unaccountable _relaxing_ thing again, his eyes flicking to the corner of the room. Clint followed the glance and saw nothing but a discreet security camera; he raised an eyebrow at Natasha and found her staring wide-eyed at the set of Tony's shoulders --his legs-- his face, her mouth actually falling open a little. She'd caught something he hadn't.

“It’s not bad," Tony said reluctantly. "I’m-- I really am _fine,_ okay?”

“Okay.”

They went quiet, drinking their artisan sodas. Nat took over the couch opposite and they all watched Cap examine Tony’s hands.

"...Rogers, what is this thing with my hands, yes I have hands, they're very nice, do you like them?"

"Tony," Natasha said gently --a warning-- as Steve kneaded Tony's fingers, feeling the joints and range of motion.

"I'm not saying stop, it's just a little freaky and I don't--oh. Oh." Tony pulled his hands back and Steve let him, abruptly transferring all his attention to Tony's face.

Tony half-laughed. "Guess you saw him crush the gauntlets. Yeah, I guess everyone-- Let me tell you, it was no fun typing with broken fingers." He laughed again, like it hurt, tucking his hands under his arms and hunching forward. "And now I can type, but I don't even-- _have_ to anymore. God, my life."

“Tony, he _broke your hands_...”

“What, you think I don't know that? I was there. I noticed. And now they're fine.” Tony was looking down at the floor and he didn’t look fine; tucked against his ribs, he was flexing his fingers like he didn’t quite trust them to work.

Nat sighed and got back up, stepping over the coffee table with a taking-no-shit expression. Steve leaned back, relieved, but Tony curled in on himself with a groan.

“No, no, come on, don’t--oh...” Tony trailed off as Nat pulled him up and hugged his head to her stomach, her fingers in his hair. "I don't know what you _want_   from me," he said, a thin little thread of sound.

“You're already doing what we want, Stark. You're alive. You took care of yourself and you survived. If you can heal like that, you never have to worry about your hands again. You're all right.” Nat fixed Steve with murderous glare #3, _follow my lead or I will garrotte you,_ and Steve nodded. He looked exhausted, like the whole last week had caught up with him now that they'd established Tony would be all right, and wasn't a threat.

“...okay,” Tony said, like he didn't trust it but was just too tired to keep questioning.

Tony was still tense and wary when Nat shifted him to Steve's arms, but this time he reached out hesitantly and clutched back at Steve's shoulders, holding on like a magnet. Clint gathered up his bow and quiver and ginger beer and snuck out. He and Nat clinked bottles in the kitchen. They had a call to make to Coulson.

A good call.

XXXXXXXXX

Tony was trying not to freak out.

It was taking a lot of effort and almost constant buffer exchange with JARVIS, but he wasn’t actively freaking out. Despite the almost cataclysmic way his brain chemistry was responding to the situation.

JARVIS had been feeding him reassurances whenever he got overly tense, or defensive, and it’d defused the worst moments of interpersonal conflict, but if he’d known getting hugged by Nat, getting hugged by _Cap_ outside the armor could do this to him, he’d never have relaxed so easily.

Extremis was reading off the spiking levels of progesterone and orexin in his brain in the corner of his eye, and there was a chaotic graph of physical contact vs dopamine and oxytocin clamouring for his attention. Tony was having trouble focusing enough to turn them off, because Cap was warm and heavy and _holding on_.

_JARVIS what's going on I don’t understand._

_Physical contact is reassuring. You feel better. It is not complicated._

_but why-- it's Cap, I don't even--_

_`<Result@ERROR_Insufficient_Data: Calibration of interpretive algorithms incomplete. No conclusion available.>` _

Tony shivered slightly and Cap did this strange _stroking_ thing, all the way up Tony’s spine, which settled him back down. What the hell.

_people have touched me, people touch me all the time! it doesn't feel like this!_

_You have just undergone a traumatic change, sir. Trauma oversaturates some of the brain's feedback channels. It is likely your mood and hormone levels will be on a hair trigger for some time. That aside, I understand it feels better to be touched by someone you trust. Would you be surprised if contact with Ms Potts or Colonel Rhodes brought you comfort?_

_[reluctance-confusion-headache-exhaustion] ...no…_

Tony sighed, both audibly and wirelessly, and relaxed just a little bit. Cap was warm.

But this had gone on really much longer than-- Tony diverted his attention, letting the graphs go fuck themselves, and why the hell Extremis had 'optimized' itself to so closely monitor his emotional state he had no idea--and tuned into the tactile buffer. Heat diffusion, grip pressure over time, and the steady, reassuring thud of Cap's heartbeat over JARVIS' sensors.

Cap's breath hitched. Just a little, hardly enough to notice--it hitched again. "Cap?" Tony said, and cursed himself for the hesitant quaver in his voice. "Steve?"

Steve breathed in and sighed it out shakily -- _oh shit oh shit, he's not okay_ \-- then sat up. Tony used the corner camera to check, but his face was suspiciously dry.

"Don't do that again," Steve said, and dry face or not, his voice was gravelly.

Tony could feel his eyes getting rounder and rounder. "Do what?" he said, scrambling. "Are you allergic to me? Last time something like this happened it was my cologne. Strawberries, silent but deadly, who knew, right? If you let me up I'll go wash--"

"Don't _die_ again. That's an order."

"No dying. Got it," Tony said before his brain kicked back into gear. "You know I can't actually promise--"

"I know," Steve said, and buried his face back into where the grimy hoodie's lapel would be, if it had lapels. Tony patted his back awkwardly. He felt like he should say something, like "let it all out," although maybe not since that sounded awfully vomit-y. Yeah, he was 98% sure -- _shut UP, Extremis, that was not a query_ \-- 98% sure that's what you said while someone was puking.

"Are you smelling me?" he said instead. Brain on autopilot. Thanks, brain.

"You're not actually wearing cologne," Steve said, muffled. "But you smell different."

Tony made the loudest WTF face he could. "Uh, good different?"

"Maybe," Steve said. "You've been working on a car, and you're stressed, but...happy, maybe, under that."

"I'm going to forget the part where you just revealed you can _smell emotions_. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick," Tony muttered, "everybody wants a piece of me today."

"About that," Steve said, pulling back to look at him, "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

Tony's hand paused where it was combing the hair behind Steve's ear. "So you were doing it on purpose. Dick move, Cap."

"Yeah. We needed to gauge your reaction." Steve closed his eyes and let out a frustrated breath, tilting his head just enough that Tony's hand started moving again, combing his windblown strands back into place. “Wasn’t a lie, though; you really...scared us. Scared _me_. I’m sorry.”

"Asking for forgiveness instead of permission? You've been hanging around me too long." And maybe Cap understood Tony better than he thought, because he gave an amused huff of hot air into Tony’s hoodie and relaxed, warm against his chest. And...there was a swell of something else warm from JARVIS, although JARVIS wasn't too pleased with how they'd gone about their stress testing.

_cool it, J. This just means the next time Steve might be evil, I get to yell at him guilt-free. oh oh, or I could pretend to be evil, that sounds fun_

Tony's budding plans for pseudo-villainy were derailed when Steve took a breath and said “Come back to New York with us. Come back and _stay_ this time.”

JARVIS gave a pleased hum in the back of his head while Tony was still reeling. When someone mumbled ‘come to New York with me’ into your chest, it wasn’t usually your commanding officer, or if it was, they didn’t do it with their face buried in your clothes, and what would Tony know about commanding officers anyway--

“Sorry-- I, there’s SI, and Ms. Potts, and the campus, I shouldn’t-” Steve babbled, pulling away and leaving Tony’s graphs, and body temperature, plummeting into the ‘aww no, why’ range.

“Sure. Okay. Why not,” Tony interrupted, there was only so much of that he could take before this and _that_ graphs went into the red, and his stomach was trembling and his hands wanted to, too, but he stiffened his spine. Steve was still right there, and knowing him, he’d touch Tony soon and all the graphs would go back to normal.

“Great. That's-- Really? That's--great! Quicker to deploy,” Steve said, looking like the rug had been pulled out from under him.

“Hah. Don’t try and fool me, Cap. You just want me checking into Medical rather than transcontinental flights.”

Steve leapt on this, with fervor. “I have always--”

“It’s been months. Like, three deployments, that is not--”

“-- _always_ hated that. The rest of us sit there like adults, making sure there’s nothin' wrong, and off you hare--”

“I do not ‘hare’, I ‘jet.’ There is a speed difference of at least three orders of magnitude--”

“--And I have no _idea_ if you’re hurt, or safe, or just late for a meeting--”

“I am always late for a meeting, I live in a permanent state of lateness, it’s a calling--”

They stopped and turned towards the kitchen. Tony’d seen her in his peripheral sensors and Steve must have heard her.

“Coulson’s called off the airspace blockade. We’ve got an hour, but after that, we’ll be competing with FOX and who knows what else. You need to pack?” said Natasha.

Tony gawped. “Coercion!” he sputtered. “I _agreed!_ You-- this is unnecessary.”

She snorted in his direction, then jerked her chin. “You need to pack?”

The bots could come in the ‘jet, assuming they weren’t hiding a Thor in there, and he had a wardrobe-- maybe he should bring the fleece-knit blanket from the workshop though. And he wanted the prototype nanotech waterproofing to try out on the earpieces.

Cap’s hand landed on his shoulder, a bit too long to be called a clap, but not long enough for a squeeze. “Come on, I’ll carry the heavy stuff. Workshop first.”


End file.
